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Caucasus Chronicles

Kurdistan Regional Government Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani meets with Armenian special envoy Levon Sargsyan in Erbil in 2015. Barzani's uncle, Masoud, the leader of Kurdistan, has met with the leadership of both Armenia and Azerbaijan in 2017. (photo: Kurdistan Regional Government)

In the wake of Iraqi Kurdistan's vote to declare independence, Armenia and Azerbaijan – both countries with Kurdish minorities of their own – appeared to be taking time to develop their formal positions, mindful of the regional and global implications.

The larger regional states – Iraq, Iran and Turkey – all have strongly opposed the referendum, threatening various sanctions and rattling sabers. The United States also called for the referendum to be delayed; Russia expressed support for both territorial integrity and the peaceful expression of Kurdish self-determination. In the region itself, only Israel expressed support for both the referendum and the establishment of a Kurdish state.

Armenia’s foreign ministry spokesman Tigran Balayan told Eurasianet.org that Armenia “was carefully watching the developments,” and that a more concrete position was forthcoming. In the meantime, veteran politician Aram G. Sargsyan was reported to be in Kurdistan as an observer to the vote.

Unusually, Baku’s official position was expressed by its top Muslim cleric. “Azerbaijan, as a country suffering terrorism, is resolutely against the Kurdistan Regional Government's (KRG) referendum on independence,” Sheikh-ul-Islam Haji Allahshukur Pashazade, chairman of the Caucasian Muslims Office was quoted as saying at a conference in Turkey.

But as in Turkey, where in spite of the tough official rhetoric some ethnically Kurdish members of the ruling party were sympathetic to the referendum, in Azerbaijan some Kurdish community leaders praised the referendum and KRG president Masoud Barzani.

Lithuania has moved to change the name it uses for Georgia to “Sakartvelo,” the name Georgia calls itself, rather than the Russified name it now uses, “Gruziya.”

Speaker of the Lithuanian Parliament Seimas Viktoras Pranckietis said Lithuania’s official name for the Caucasus republic will be changed by 2018 as a “great gift” from Vilnius to the Georgian people, the website BaltNews reports.

“Georgians do not like the word ‘Gruziya’” Pranckietis said. “They prefer their country to be called ‘Sakartvelo.’”

Like most other post-Soviet countries, Lithuanians now refer to the country as “Gruziya” – a name many Georgians consider to be a relic of the Russian Empire. Georgians call their country “Sakartvelo,” meaning “a place for Kartvelians (Georgians).”

Getting other countries to drop the “Gruziya” name has long been on Georgia's diplomatic agenda.

In 2011, Georgia's foreign ministry proudly announced that South Korea, which had been using “Gruziya,” had agreed to make the switch. “This is of special importance for us taking into consideration the fact that number of countries, including those which are our friends, have failed so far to do so,” Nino Kalandadze, the Georgian deputy foreign minister, at the time, told reporters.

Earlier, in 2005, Georgia began lobbying Israel to drop Gruziya in favor of Georgia. The Israeli case was considered vital since a Hebrew variant of “Georgia” had been used for centuries before an influx of migrants from the former Soviet Union popularized the Russianized version.

Armenian members of parliament on a rare visit to Azerbaijan. (photo: Republic of Armenia National Assembly Committee on Foreign Relations)

Two Armenian members of parliament have made a rare visit to Azerbaijan, where they spoke out against their hosts' “xenophobic propaganda” and incurred the wrath of nationalist Azerbaijanis.

The delegation was in Baku last week to take part in a session of the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly, a European Union body devoted to parliamentary cooperation with its partners in the former Soviet Union.

“We came here because Euronest is an essential platform for us,” said Armen Ashotyan, the head of the two-member delegation. “Armenia is about to sign a new agreement with the European Union. The other reason we came here is that such an event could have well been used for anti-Armenia rhetoric and propaganda in the presence of European MPs.”

In a speech to the assembly on September 22, Ashotyan also spoke about “Armenophobia and xenophobia” in Azerbaijan's school system, and gave a book titled “‘Azerbaijan: Childhood in Hate’ to the host country's deputy education minister, Armenian media reported. It's not known what the Azerbaijani official's reaction was.

The other delegate, Mane Tandilyan, said she toured Baku with the aim of learning about Armenian sites there.

“Tomorrow we’re going to take a walk to different places in Baku to check the condition of the existing Armenian heritage,” she said on September 22. She didn't report back on her findings, except that she couldn't get into Baku's long-closed central Armenian church, but said she would soon brief Armenians.

An all-day conference in Los Angeles, to be held September 23, will explore ways that Armenian Diaspora communities can more efficiently and effectively interact with their homeland to promote social and economic progress.

The central theme of the conference, Innovate Armenia 2017, is “rethinking, relearning and reimagining identity, language, history and technology.” The gathering is organized by the University of Southern California’s Institute of Armenian Studies.

A key to change is shaping a “global Armenian identity,” said Salpi Ghazarian, the institute’s director and the driving force behind the annual conference, which is in its third year.

“Victims of genocide lived through the 20th century with a particular kind of mindset. In the 21st century, Armenians have a state, and are thriving around the world,” Ghazarian said in an email interview with EurasiaNet.org. “This mandates a change in imagining and thinking about everything.”

“On the international level, technology and cheap transportation have also changed the way societies live and nations interact. And they are particularly useful for a nation with a huge Diaspora,” Ghazarian added.

An Azerbaijani flag at an LGBT pride parade in Germany in 2015. Police have reportedly arrested more than 100 gay Azerbaijanis over the past days. (photo: Ghvinotsdaati, Wikimedia Commons)

Police have detained dozens of gay and transsexual people in Azerbaijan following a number of raids around Baku, with reports of torture and beatings, local LGBT activists have reported.

It's unclear what prompted the roundup, or how many people have been affected. Lawyers working on the cases say that at least 100 people have been detained over a period of several days.

"Suddenly, without any clear reasons to us, police officers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs organized raids against gay and transsexual people,” said Javid Nabiyev, the president of the Nefes LGBT Azerbaijan Alliance, in a video message published on September 22.

Nabiyev said that the raids took place in private homes and public places where gay people are known to congregate. Some of those detained have been forced to inform on their friends. Family members and lawyers have been denied access to the detainees.

The Sweden-based human rights group Civil Rights Defenders spoke to several activists in Baku on condition of anonymity.

"Activists report that the detainees were subjected to beatings, verbal abuse, and forced medical examinations, as well as transsexual women’s heads being forcibly shaven," the group said in a statement. "Many were released only after giving up the addresses of fellow members of the LGBTI community, who were then in turn arrested and subjected to the same treatment. An undetermined number of those detained have been sentenced to either 20 or 30 days of administrative detention."

Police have said that the detentions are unrelated to the sexual orientation of the detainees and accuse them of being engaged in prostitution.

The Russian Supreme Court has upheld a prior decision to shutter the country's largest Azeri diaspora organization, a move that was sharply criticized by Baku.

The All-Russian Azerbaijani Congress (ARAC) was liquidated on September 19 at the request of the Russian Ministry of Justice. Hikmet Hajiyev, spokesman for Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the verdict was “surprising” and caused “deep regret.”

“In general, we regard the decision to eliminate ARAC, which played an important role in the development of humanitarian relations between Azerbaijan and Russia, as an unfriendly step from the political point of view, which severely impacts the development of the strategic partnership of the two countries at a high level,” Hajiyev told the AzerTaj state news agency. He also called into question Russia's objectivity as part of the international team mediating between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the territory of Nagorno Karabakh.

A new government education policy that gives a special status for the Russian language in Armenia's schools has provoked a backlash, the latest flashpoint in a tense struggle over the status of Russian in the country.

The proposal by Armenia's Ministry of Education and Science, developed on behalf of Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan, was published on e-draft.am, a government portal allowing public scrutiny over legal drafts prior to their adoption.

The policy doesn't necessarily change anything about the way foreign languages are taught in Armenia, but it does restate the primary place given to Russian. “[T]he educational system of the Republic of Armenia needs reforms that will enable citizens to master several foreign languages such as Russian, one or more European (English, French, German, etc.) and Eastern (Arabic, Persian, Chinese, etc.) languages,” the policy statement reads.

That was too much for some in Armenia. Pro-Western activist David Sanasaryan told reporters that the unstated aim of the proposal is to lay the groundwork for Russian becoming an official language in the country.

“The Russian side has always been sincere, they have always clearly expressed their desires and aspirations – they want to provide a high-level of knowledge of the Russian language in the post-Soviet space” he said.

The rushed nature of the document has also been a cause for concern. Expert on higher education Samvel Karabekyan noted stylistic and spelling errors in the draft. The mistakes, he says, along with the fact a previous document was presented only last month, indicate that the amendment appears to have been hastily introduced.

Anatoly Bibilov, de facto president of South Ossetia, at a ceremony marking the first day of the 2017-2018 school year. (photo: http://presidentruo.org/)

The school year has just begun in South Ossetia, but it could prove to be a strange one for the territory’s few remaining ethnic Georgians.

From this year onwards, all Georgian-medium schools in the self-declared republic are to shift to the Russian language (Georgian will remain an elective subject).

The change is to begin gradually, starting with the first to fourth grades, with an additional grade to transfer to Russian-language education each subsequent year, the territory’s de-facto minister of science and education Natali Gassiyeva reported in August.

In an interview with the news site South Ossetia Today, Deputy Education Minister Elisa Gagloeva said she hoped that Russian-language education would aid Georgian children to eventually find a place in South Ossetia’s universities. Gagloeva added in a July interview for Nykhas that the territory’s Georgian-language schools continued to use textbooks from Tbilisi, and that the de-facto authorities simply did not have the resources to translate their own curriculum into Georgian.

Of the territory’s 53,532 inhabitants (according to its last census, conducted in 2015), some 3,966 are ethnic Georgians, making them the second most numerous ethnic group. While most of its Georgians have fled the territory, 2,337 still live in the Akhalgori district, where they comprise 55% of the local population.

Armenian Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian speaking September 18 at the "Armenia-Diaspora" conference, where he suggested Armenia may be willing to return some territories to Azerbaijan. (photo: mfa.am)

Armenia's foreign minister suggested the country could hand over certain territories around the disputed Nagorno Karabakh to Azerbaijan as part of a hypothetical peace deal, sparking controversy among Armenians.

The widespread outrage underscores the disconnect between hardened public perceptions of the conflict and diplomatic proposals that have long been the subject of negotiations in the effort to resolve it.

Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian made the remarks on September 18 at the “Armenia-Diaspora” conference in Yerevan. During the question and answer session he was asked about Armenian territorial withdrawals outlined in what is known as the “Madrid Principles” worked out by international negotiators.

“As far as the return of territories, we are talking about those territories that [if returned] would not threaten the security of Karabakh, nor the [conflict’s] resolution,” Nalbandian was quoted as saying. “I cannot add any other details, or negotiations might fail.”

The question was most likely spurred by the outgoing interim United States negotiator for Karabakh Richard Hoagland’s comments on the Madrid Principles made last month.

“There can be no settlement without respect for Azerbaijan’s sovereignty, and the recognition that its sovereignty over these territories must be restored,” Hoagland said.

That statement was widely criticized in Armenian American media as excessively pro-Azerbaijani.

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan visits positions on the line of contact with Azerbaijan. (photo: president.am)

A new report has detailed how nationalist rhetoric has become more widespread across the societies of both Armenia and Azerbaijan since the two fought a brief war last April.

The April war and subsequent clashes "not only spur up tension and violence, but are also accompanied by significant ideological and discursive changes within the countries," the report, in the journal Caucasus Edition, said. "They contribute to the growth of militaristic and revanchist sentiments within the societies."

In Armenia, the political opposition to the government was neutered, as "[t]he aftermath of the hostilities saw a patriotic mobilization and hardening of attitudes toward the other side of the conflict," wrote the author of the Armenian section of the report, Mikayel Zolyan.

This was particularly noticeable in this year's parliamentary elections: "[T]he opposition’s rhetoric significantly softened in the aftermath of the April war. Even during the election campaign for the 2017 parliamentary elections, most opposition parties refrained from such attacks on the ruling government," Zolyan wrote.

And Azerbaijan saw a similar dynamic, albeit in a space with even less room for dissent; the report quotes one patriotic commentator who criticized liberal voices for peace on social media: "Referring to the role of intelligentsia, particularly writers, he stated that “they would be making a greater contribution to the common victory if they did not behave as women writing statements about humanity for getting ‘likes’"

About Caucasus Chronicles

The countries of the South Caucasus -- Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia -- are home to some of the world's oldest cultures, their rich traditions cultivated in its dramatic mountain, desert and coastal landscapes. It's also the site of intense geopolitical jockeying, cutthroat politics, rising nationalism and the specter of war.

Caucasus Chronicles is a collection of voices from around the region offering diverse takes on events in this rapidly changing region.

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